Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science

by Richard Bevan Braithwaite

The primary purpose of this book is to examine the logical features common to all the sciences. Each science proceeds by inventing general principles from which are deduced the consequences to be tested by observation and experiment; the author shows how the implications of this process explain some of its more baffling features and resolves many of the difficulties that philosophers have found in them. His exposition is by way of detailed examples.

Genres: Science, Philosophy

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

BLUF: you should actually read the last chapter of this book regardless of if you want to commit to the whole work.

Really fascinating take on the philosophy of science and statistics. I greatly enjoy Braithwaite’s deeply Piercian pragmatistic of view of science, inference, and inquiry. Wish I had read this during my thesis research because he really eloquently describes a relationship between pure deductive mathematics and empirical, inductive observation through probabilistic constructions; science is about constructing “hypothetico-deductive” frameworks which are more general than your individual observations, that are in accordance with them, but hypothesize and abstract conceptual realities beyond observations that are useful.

The downside of the book is that the first half is a total slog (pages of barely comprehensible particularized mathematical constructions that I think he kind of belabors too much). Once you work through it though (and it is worth it, just realize that the exact details are not critical to the thesis and that a bit of scanning gets the sketch across better than a careful read) his points are quite compelling and the baseline ideas are very useful to conceptualize and think about how math science and probability connect practically.

There is also a very interesting throughline from Pierce to Latour that I need to think about with this book. Also I thought it was very fun that he references Poincaré’s Science and Hypothesis that I just read earlier this year.

[Ian Slagle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is another victim of expectations. This is cited in *Structure*, which is usually a good sign, and you could hardly do better cooking up a book title to entice me in a lab. Unfortunately, the reality is that this book tries, unconvincingly, to map scientific claims into logical equations. There are some good sections in this, but you have to go digging.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reject rejection rules.